Kisame Hoshigaki

Towering and heavily built, Kisame stands as the largest of all Akatsuki. Everything about him evokes a shark: skin tinted pale green in the manga and blue-grey in the anime, small round white eyes, three curved marks etched beneath each, gills along his shoulders, rows of pointed teeth, and blue hair swept up into a fin. In Akatsuki he wears the group's dark cloak with nothing beneath it, a brown sash across his back to carry Samehada, and dark-purple polish on his nails. His slashed Mist headband and the yellow ring reading "south" round out the look.

Combat is Kisame's joy, and he pursues it with a sadistic streak, unbothered by the thought of maiming a foe, as when he floated cutting off Naruto's legs to keep him from fleeing. For all that ferocity he is shrewd in a fight, quick to read a technique and sense danger, and fond of telling doomed opponents how lucky they are. His bond with Itachi defines much of him: the two shared little in temperament yet understood each other as men who had betrayed people close to them, and Kisame deferred to his partner's greater strength and judgment, acting only on his word. Beneath the morbid humor lay deep disillusionment. Ordered again and again to kill his own comrades, and later learning that the master he trusted had sold out their village, he came to see his whole life as a lie and himself as worthless. That pain calcified into a single creed, protecting vital information above all else, a conviction he ultimately died upholding, finding at the end that he was not so terrible after all.

Kisame first served under Fuguki Suikazan of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, and on his master's orders he slew the Cypher Division rather than let their secrets leak to the enemy. When he discovered that Fuguki was himself trading intelligence, Kisame killed him and claimed the sentient, flesh-shredding blade Samehada. Soon after, the masked figure calling himself Madara approached him with the Eye of the Moon Plan and its promise of a world of truth, which drew the disillusioned swordsman in. Wanted by the Land of Water for treason and assassinations, he defected and joined Akatsuki, where he was paired with Itachi Uchiha. His raw power was staggering: chakra reserves so vast that, fused with Samehada, he was nicknamed the tailless tailed beast, plus mastery of Water Release that let him flood a battlefield and shape it into sharks, the ability to summon sharks and drain an enemy's chakra, and the option to merge with his sword to heal and breathe underwater. In Part I he trailed Naruto with Itachi, absorbing the boy's chakra before Jiraiya's toads drove the pair off. During the Kazekage rescue he used a remote-controlled clone to stall Team Guy while Shukaku was sealed, and he later captured the Four-Tails' host Rōshi without a scratch. Ordered to take Killer B alone around the time of the Five Kage Summit, he tore into B and his allies, but a decoy clone was decapitated by the Raikage while the true Kisame hid inside Samehada to slip into Kumogakure and copy its war plans. His cover finally broke when Naruto sensed his hatred through the blade. Cornered on the island and beaten by Might Guy's Daytime Tiger, Kisame trapped himself in a water prison and let his own summoned sharks devour him rather than surrender the intelligence he carried, dying with a smile. Even so, the scroll he had dispatched reached Zetsu, handing Akatsuki the strength and whereabouts of the entire Allied Shinobi Forces.